With eye on upcoming free agents, Bengals monitor their rollover

[Arkansas Bengal]

With eye on upcoming free agents, Bengals monitor their rollover

 

CINCINNATI -- With more than a dozen key players eligible for free agency after this season, the Cincinnati Bengals will soon be confronted with several important personnel decisions.

Some of those decisions could be made during training camp. Others might not come until March.

To give you an idea of just how the Bengals might approach re-signing or extending the players who are entering contract seasons, we're spending this week looking at a number of issues regarding the team's free-agency philosophy.  We started Monday by asking how valuable receiver A.J. Green is to the franchise.

We continue by taking a look at the way the Bengals will pay him and other upcoming free agents:

 

Bengals will stick with rollover formula

The Bengals' window for completing contract extensions closes about Sept. 7.

Sure, they are perfectly free to work out deals with several of their upcoming free agents once the season starts Sept. 13, but they don't plan on doing that. In-season contract negotiations can be distracting and a headache for both the player and franchise. So if Cincinnati gets any deals reached before next offseason, look for them to happen within the next five or six weeks.

With Green's insistence that he likes the city and his optimism about what the Bengals are building, it wouldn't be surprising if he worked out a new contract within that window. The long-term signings of Dez Bryant and Demaryius Thomas this month (five years, $70 million) helped set the bar for what the league's elite pass-catchers should make. A four-time Pro Bowler coming off his rookie deal, Green certainly could be within that financial ballpark.

But what if Green doesn't end up getting a new deal before September? The Bengals likely might try to commit long-term cash to a couple other players they want to retain beyond 2015. Adam Jones, Leon Hall, George Iloka, Reggie Nelson, Marvin Jones, Mohamed Sanu, Brandon Thompson, Andrew Whitworth and Andre Smith are all among the Bengals' upcoming free agents.

The question about preseason extensions also hinges on one important point: rollover money.

Rollover money is the amount of cash teams set aside after their contractual obligations from the previous season have been met. In order to spend the rollover amount they also have to be in compliance with the salary cap by spending 89 percent of their unadjusted cap space across a four-year period. Since the latest collective bargaining agreement in 2011 began permitting year-to-year rollovers, the Bengals' formula with preseason extensions has included "rolling over" that extra cash and applying it to new contracts.

By most estimates, the Bengals last year had about $8.6 million in rollover funds. That money was applied to the contracts signed by Andy Dalton and Vontaze Burfict. Combined, Dalton and Burfict took home $8.8 million in roster bonuses last season. Anticipate a similar rollover figure this year.

In the past two years, the Bengals have applied their rollover to two big-contract long-term extensions per season. If they don’t work out a deal with Green before the season, maybe they’ll have enough room to extend three players this year.

 

http://espn.go.com/blog/cincinnati-bengals/post/_/id/18007/bengals-aj-green-free-agents-rollover-formula-philosophy-carryover

 

[|Harley|]

I wouldn't bet they would try to pursue extensions with Andre or Leon before some of the others. I'd like to see Reggie locked up.

[happyrid]

I wouldn't bet they would try to pursue extensions with Andre or Leon before some of the others. I'd like to see Reggie locked up.

 

They usually focus on the younger guys first. 

 

George Iloka and Marvin Jones would be my top 2 targets for extensions if they are healthy and looking good during training camp. They are both young, athletic and play relatively premium positions. And the Bengals do not have realistic replacements lined up for them in-house. If they let those 2 play out 2015 without an extension and they have good seasons, they could end up being too expensive to keep. 

 

Kevin Zeitler is another young guy who might be worth locking up now. They have a 5th year option on him for 2016, but it's pretty expensive. He's been an above average starter from day one and is still really young. 

 

Older guys like Adam Jones, Leon Hall, Reggie Nelson, Wallace Gilberry and Andrew Whitworth aren't going to be real expensive if they hit the open market and there's not much upside to trying to get extensions done now. I'd let those guys play it out and then figure out which ones to keep next March.